Battle Creek Touts Local Fiber In White Paper

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The economic development agency for Calhoun County, Battle Creek Unlimited, has released a white paper titled “Battle Creek Bandwidth Bountiful for Businesses.”

The document addresses the benefits of the fiber optic loop that connects the Cereal City’s downtown area, Battle Creek airport, Fort Custer Industrial Park, and all major business areas.

BCU and the city of Battle Creek made the strategic decision to install the network as a way to attract and retain high-tech companies to the area, as well as accommodate the city’s largest employers. BCU is the economic development organization that works with the City of Battle Creek to transform and diversify the Battle Creek economy.

Available speeds include Fast Ethernet (100 megabytes per second), OC-3 (150 megabytes per second) or T3 (50 megabytes per second) delivered by Synchronous Optical Netowrking ring; Ethernet Passive Optical Network service at 100 megabytes per second; Gigabit Passive Optical Network at 2.4 gigabits per second download and 1.2 gigabit upload, with an Ethernet port of up to one gigabit per second at the customer end; amd Active Ethernet and Carrier Ethernet with speeds up to 1 gigabit per second. There are also Dedicated Optical Ethernet Circuits with speeds at 1 gigabit per second or 10 gigabit per second so that government, education, healthcare or enterprise customers can build private Wide Area Networks (WAN) to connect buildings across town, or farther away.

“We are fortunate that our community had the foresight to understand the significance of what a truly connected community means to business,” said BCU president and CEO Karl Dehn. “Battle Creek is ahead of the curve when it comes to connectivity, and it’s a competitive advantage when considering locations for a business.”

The city built a robust underground conduit system to carry fiber optic strands to connect downtown Battle Creek with The Fort Custer Industrial Park, to the west of town. This decision proved to make Battle Creek a “well connected city” enabling the expansion of existing businesses and creating an environment that welcomes new businesses with a technologically superior connection to the Internet.

An agreement between BCU and a locally based service provider, CTS Telecom, arranged for 30 dedicated fiber optic strands for its own use. Economic developers acquired six dedicated strands and a portion of the bandwidth for public education, nonprofit and other governmental uses. The remaining bandwidth allows for private sector opportunities.

Access, connectivity and speed have emerged as three of the most important considerations for businesses in the 21st century. Large enterprise, small and medium business, health care providers and local schools in Battle Creek all benefit from speedy access connections of up to one gigabit per second — more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today.